Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

“He is a religious writer; he is a comic realist; he knows what everything feels like, how everything works. He is putting together a body of work which in substantial intelligent creation will eventually be seen as second to none in our time.”

A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975.

The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which the first, “Olinger Stories,” already appeared as a paperback in 1964; in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as “a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid pattern.” These eleven tales, whose heroes age from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, are followed by groupings titled “Out in the World,” “Married Life,” and “Family Life,” tracing a common American trajectory. Family life is disrupted by the advent of “The Two Iseults,” a bifurcation originating in another small town, Tarbox, Massachusetts, where the Puritan heritage co-exists with post-Christian morals. “Tarbox Tales” are followed by “Far Out,” a group of more or less experimental fictions on the edge of domestic space, and “The Single Life,” whose protagonists are unmarried and unmoored.

Of these one hundred three stories, eighty first appeared in The New Yorker, and the other twenty-three in journals from the enduring Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s to the defunct Big Table and Transatlantic Review. All show Mr. Updike’s wit and verbal felicity, his reverence for ordinary life, and his love of the transient world.

From the Hardcover edition.

Synopsis:

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the

Synopsis:

Encompassing nearly all the short fiction published between 1953 and 1975, this remarkable anthology contains 103 stories by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author, ranging from his first work "Ace in the Hole," written as a Harvard undergraduate, to "Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer," accompanied by an introduction by the author. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

Synopsis:

He is a religious writer; he is a comic realist; he knows what everything feels like, how everything works. He is putting together a body of work which in substantial intelligent creation will eventually be seen as second to none in our time.

A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975.

The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which the first, Olinger Stories, already appeared as a paperback in 1964; in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid pattern. These eleven tales, whose heroes age from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, are followed by groupings

Table of Contents

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you — The alligators — Pigeon feathers — Friends from Philadelphia — A sense of shelter — Flight — The happiest I've been — The persistence of desire — The blessed man of Boston, my grandmother's thimble, and Fanning Island — Packed dirt, churchgoing, a dying cat, a traded car — In football season — The lucid eye in Silver Town — The kid's whistling — Ace in the hole — Tomorrow and tomorrow and so forth — The Christian roommates — Dentistry and doubt — A madman — Still life — Home — Who made yellow roses yellow? — His finest hour — A trillion feet of gas — Dear Alexandros — The doctor's wife — At a bar in Charlotte Amalie — Toward evening — Snowing in Greenwich Village — Sunday teasing — Incest — A gift from the city — Walter Briggs — The crow in the woods — Should wizard hit Mommy? — Wife-wooing — Unstuck — Giving blood — Twin beds in Rome — Marching through Boston — Nakedness — The family meadow — The day of the dying rabbit — How to love America and leave it at the same time — The music school — Man and daughter in the cold — The rescue — Plumbing — The orphaned swimming pool — When everyone was pregnant — Eros rampant — Sublimating — Nevada — The gun shop — Son — Daughter, last glimpses of — Solitaire — Leaves — The stare — Museums and women — Avec la b

"Synopsis"
by Google Editions,
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the

"Synopsis"
by Google,
Encompassing nearly all the short fiction published between 1953 and 1975, this remarkable anthology contains 103 stories by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author, ranging from his first work "Ace in the Hole," written as a Harvard undergraduate, to "Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer," accompanied by an introduction by the author. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

"Synopsis"
by Google Editions,
He is a religious writer; he is a comic realist; he knows what everything feels like, how everything works. He is putting together a body of work which in substantial intelligent creation will eventually be seen as second to none in our time.

A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975.

The stories are arranged in eight sections, of which the first, Olinger Stories, already appeared as a paperback in 1964; in its introduction, Updike described Olinger, Pennsylvania, as a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid pattern. These eleven tales, whose heroes age from ten to over thirty but remain at heart Olinger boys, are followed by groupings

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